Zelenskyy ready to meet with Trump during Thanksgiving to finalize agreement – Yermak
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to meet with President Trump "as soon as possible" – possibly by Thanksgiving – to finalize a joint agreement between the United States and Ukraine on the terms of ending the war, said Andriy Yermak, head of the President’s Office of Ukraine.
"I hope the visit of President Zelenskyy will take place as soon as possible, because ... it will be help President Trump to continue his historical mission to end this war," Yermak told Axios in an interview over Zoom Tuesday morning. "Because [Trump] can say: 'Look, this is confirmed and agreed, our position with the Ukrainians. We support it, and we continue now to speak with the Russians.'"
According to reports, American and Ukrainian officials have reached an agreement in principle on most aspects of the plan, which differs significantly from the original 28-point U.S. proposal. However, Zelenskyy wants to discuss territorial concessions directly with Trump, according to Yermak.
An American official confirmed that talks with the Ukrainians are underway to meet this or next week, though no date has been set yet.
Trump will leave Washington on Tuesday night for Thanksgiving and plans to stay at Mar-a-Lago until Sunday. Yermak said that holding the meeting during the holiday period could have symbolic significance.
He also noted that the main disagreement the presidents must overcome is over territory. The 28-point plan offered Russia more territory than it currently controls, provoking a strong negative reaction from Ukraine.
The U.S. argued that the current course of the war indicated Ukraine's loss of territory was only a matter of time.
Except for specific issues, including territorial ones, that Zelenskyy wants to discuss with Trump, Yermak said that the current draft meets Ukraine's interests and respects its red lines.
One of the key issues included in the new draft is the security guarantees that the United States and its European allies will provide to Ukraine.
"I think it now looks very solid," Yermak said of the text on security guarantees. "I think it's a historical decision of President Trump and the United States to issue these strong security guarantees, which Ukraine never had before."
He said the security guarantees would be "legally binding" and that there had been a "positive reaction" from the US to the idea of enshrining them in a formal treaty.
The previous draft called on the US and NATO to view a prolonged Russian attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire "transatlantic community." Initially, the US plan envisaged that Ukraine would give up NATO membership and the presence of NATO troops on its territory in exchange for security guarantees. Yermak said that Ukraine would not give up its constitutional obligation to move towards NATO in the future, but added: "We are living in reality now. We not in NATO."
The current draft has 19 points, from which issues not directly related to peace in Ukraine have been removed, and several other points have been changed to make them more acceptable to Kyiv.
